


Deep, Dark, and Not-So Marvellous

by Junkyardmob



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:07:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27144277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Junkyardmob/pseuds/Junkyardmob
Summary: A self-inserty-ish sort of story involving one person's flailing adventures.First work, no idea where I'm going with this oh god what am I doing.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

God I’m tired. Clock says it’s only five minutes past from when I checked it last, but it feels like years.

I mean, I don’t know what I was expecting, staying awake for so long, but Sweet Jesus, I’m exhausted.

It all has to do with my sleep schedule, you see. I gotta stay up, gotta stay at it. I’d been sleeping too erratically, too often, and now I’m all fucked up and a bag of chips.

I’d been sleeping in short increments for much too long. Three hours here, one and half hours there, splitting up my sleep to several points across the day; none of them actually restful and all of them adding up to be juuuust below what should be healthy for a functional human being.

I hadn’t liked it. I’d hated it, in fact, but what could I do?

Quit my job?

In this economy?

No, I’d needed to power through the crunch and the stress and the sheer contempt my bosses liked to shovel at me alongside those ridiculous hours and stupid workload for too little pay and no recognition. No weekends off, no vacation, no sick days, and no overtime pay, or you’d be out on your ass. Oh, sure, they’d not officially say or do anything, but this was a right to work state, and I’m at-will-employed. Anybody raised a fuss, anybody slacked off, anybody went home early or at the time they said you supposedly can go home or did anything but put a hundred and twelve percent of their fucking life into the project and the company, and they’d fire your ass. They’d find some reason, even if they had to make one up, and they’d fire you within a day.

And then you’d be stuck, in the middle of the city, with no job and bills to pay and a fucking country on the goddamned edge and nothing you could do.

So, I sucked it up. And I did the work.

Most of my coworkers burned out and got replaced, and the ones who didn’t always seemed like they were five seconds away from either breaking down weeping in the fetal position or going on a workplace massacre with the contents of their pen drawer. I couldn’t throw stones, though. Given what little I’d seen of myself in a mirror over the past few months, I’m pretty sure they’d say I looked like I was always on the edge doing one, the other, or both at the same time. Which would probably make for a really pathetic and confusing rampage, but whatever.

I’d worked hard. If I only worked a total of fourteen hours in a single day, then I considered myself a lucky man. Most days, it was seventeen to eighteen, with some going as high as twenty, or even twenty-two. On the latter days, I didn’t even go home; I just slept in my car.

And I was lucky. I lived only a short distance away, not comfortably walkable but not overly long. It kept my commute time down, allowed me that little more bit of sleep at night. Home was where my three to four- and-half-hour sleeps came from; mealtimes and my car were when the remainder arrived.

Security was supposed to crack down on people doing that, corporate said it was ‘bad for our image’, but corporate was also paying security a whopping fifty cents over minimum wage, so they could go suck a fat one.

And of course, the bosses didn’t work those kinds of hours. Oh no, not them. They worked sensible times, eight hours a day, ten at most, six or even four when they felt cheeky and selfish and fucking entitled. And on those days, we had to pick up their slack. We had to work even harder, push our selves even more, just so that when the bosses came back the next day from their lovely little houses and their lovely little families and their lovely little lives, they wouldn’t find themselves inconvenienced by the work they simply decided to abandon the day before in favor of going to a golf course or a movie theater or, I don’t know, the fucking local bordello.

If we didn’t make sure the we had worked hard enough so that they didn’t have an increased work pile because of their decision to leave the office early, then it was obviously our faults and it meant someone needed to be fired for it, logic and fairness and justice be damned.

Bitter? Moi? Don’t be absurd.

But yeah, it sucked ass. It sucked ass a lot, and frankly, there were several times when I was damned certain I wasn’t actually going to make to see the project’s end, either because I’d be the ‘winner’ in today’s rousing game of ‘who gets to be thrown out on their ass in the middle of an economic clusterfuck’ or because my terrible eating habits and total lack of sleep would gang up with a lifetime of health problems to actually fucking kill me.

But neither of those things happened. We’d made it. The project was done. Hell, we’d even done it on time and under budget. Granted, the last only happened because of pay cuts and a lack of overtime compensation, but it had happened.

Corporate was pleased. Very pleased. They’d rewarded our branch with a pretty hefty bonus, that was to be distributed ‘as the management saw fit, in accordance to the work, effort, and dedication displayed by the individual employees who gave so much to ensure this project was completed when and how it was’.

So naturally the head of the local branch kept it all to himself and started firing anyone who complained.

This was a little much, even for Corporate America. The CEO and the board got involved, not out of any actual moral concerns, mind you, but because this guy had just pocketed a cool half a million plus of their money, without sharing even a pittance with any of the hundreds of employees under his command, including several suits who had connections to said CEO and board. In fact, if office rumor was to be believed, one of said suits had complained about getting jack squat and gotten swiftly canned, only for it to turn out she was the CEO’s daughter in law and the niece of a prominent board member.

Now the big boss man’s out on his ass (and I cannot overstate just how vindicating that feels) and the entire branch is temporarily shut down while the bean counters go over the books with a fine-tooth comb. They need to make sure that nobodies been embezzling more than the amount you just gotta accept will happen for a sizeable corporation, and in meantime, everybody’s getting paid vacation days. Well, ‘cept the janitors. And security. They still gotta work, can’t do bean counting in a messy office while worrying about roving burglars, but I’m pretty sure one of the first fuckers keeps getting one of the second fuckers to steal my lunches, so screw them both.

As for the rest of us, when the news we were getting indefinite paid vacation hit (and, more importantly, when we realized that it was a genuine announcement and neither a trap nor the some man-child prankster having a sick joke at our expense), well, we were all out of the office that same day. We weren’t supposed to be, but then big boss man got caught trying to flee the country under a fake identity and an even faker mustache, and suddenly the company had bigger things to worry about.

I don’t know what my coworkers are doing with this free time, and frankly, I don’t care. I’ve been too busy putting my life back together.

I’ve whistled up some of my friends, and they were happy to hear from me. My parents and family finally got phone calls instead of a short text message, and hearing their voices and laughter was a treat I hadn’t known I needed.

Church was a blessing too. I walked in the door early on Saturday morning so I could volunteer to be organist come Sunday, and the face of old Father Francis lit up like the New York skyline. He spent an hour and a half telling me the recent what’s-what within the congregation, and another half hour letting me vent about my job. Then I’d spent the rest of the day shaking off the rust so I could play the songs to point where they sounded like they were actual music and not the dying spasms of a wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man somehow hitting the keys.

I’d gotten back into my discord circles. My DnD fellows were willing to let me rejoin the group session. I’d said hi to my neighbors. And that was just the social circle stuff.

I’d drawn, sketched and painted again. I’d restarted exercising and eating right. I’d worked my way through some video games and consumed some of the latest installments of a few favorite books series, tv shows, and comics. I was well on my way to feeling like an actual human being, not just a rapidly-wearing-down cog in an uncaring corporate machine. There was just one problem.

And that problem was sleep.

I’d spent so long dishing myself miniature portions of sleep at random times that my body simply adapted and woke me up after a couple of hours. I couldn’t get a good night’s rest anymore. I’d clock out at eleven and be up at three. Then I stay up till noon, clock out again, and wake up at two. Then be out at five thirty, and up at eight.

It was unsustainable, and more importantly, unpleasant. So, I’d looked up solutions online, and then dived in headfirst into my current situation.

Step one was to stay awake for over twenty-four hours. This would reset my circadian rhythm completely. I also needed to aid this along by not eating any food and only drinking minimal water for the sixteen hours leading up to the time that I wanted to normally wake up at.

Step two would be to eat a big-ass breakfast upon waking up, or at the time that I wanted to wake up at, with the former hopefully being the latter. This would activate the old hunter-gatherer instincts, telling my body when and where the food was.

Steps three to infinity would be to go to sleep at the same time every night until my body finally got the damn picture and everything completely reset.

It was a sound plan on paper, but paper is a flimsy little thing and one can write so many lies on it’s white, gleaming surface.

For a start, actually staying up for over twenty-four hours is fucking torture. I was already fighting months of exertion, and now I’m putting my body through this? ‘Why are you doing this to yourself?!’ my poor organs are shouting while crying metaphorical tears. ‘Have you finally gone completely insane?!’ they shriek while begging me to indulge the impatient sandman.

For a second, I can’t drink any coffee or soda to help me stay awake. I can drink beer like a boss and leave grown men twice my size staring in bewilderment over my superior tequila skills, but one can of coke and suddenly I feel like someone’s squeezing my midsection and everything in my guts are gonna come rushing out of either end in a flooding torrent.

And don’t get me started on what happened when I drank expresso that one time. Hoo boy, those twenty-five bucks were not worth it.

Point is, I can’t take caffeine. It doesn’t work and it leaves me feeling sick as hell. And with that major aid unavailable, the whole thing becomes ten times harder.

Eating helped for a while, but now I’m in my sixteen-hour-stretch, and I can’t have so much as a bite. Walking helped as well, but now it’s both dark as hell and pouring rain, and the last time I went out in conditions like this, I almost got shot by a withdrawal-ridden lunatic hoping to find a way to pay ‘the meth fairy’.

So, I’m stuck here. In my studio apartment. With the quite relaxing sound of the rain pouring outside my windows.

I run my hand down my face, adjust my glasses, then look back at the clock.

Two minutes have passed.

Fuck me.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It’s forty-five minutes later. Things still suck, but at least I’ve found entertainment.

Some new guy named GlowingPurple popped into a discord server I’m part of shortly after the last of everybody else left and started posting in the off-topic channel. He was raving his pants off about some game called ‘The Shivah’ and how its main character was ‘an intelligent and willful man’. I was trying to stay awake but was (ironically) too tired to do anything stimulating, so I’d asked him why he felt that way, and all I got as a response was that ‘Rabbi Stone, despite his humble status, speaks to me as a man’. I’d called him a ‘cryptic and un-elaborative Winnie-Poo’ and gotten a smiley emoji in response.

Then the guy started asking me if I’d seen various other works, and what my opinion on them was. Weird little guy that he was, he still asked my opinion even if I admitted to never having seen them before in my life.

I liked the MCU, which he found to be ‘an exciting vacation’. This was in contrast to the DCCU, which I thought sucked and he found ‘grim and unpleasantly grey’. He enjoyed Game of Thrones, calling the last season ‘unrepresentative of it’s true beauty’, whatever that meant, and thought Harry Potter was ‘whimsical and flooded with color’, although he seemed to dislike Dumbledore. I told him I liked Steven Universe, more for the deconstructions of standard tropes in Future and the lesbian rocks than anything else, and he said the gem empire was ‘worrying’ and that he was glad Steven had ‘pacified it’. I’d never read the SCP wiki, though I knew what it was, and he went on a whole tirade about them ‘locking up the undeserving’. Same with LOTR and Gandalf the Grey/White, for some incredibly strange reason. He’d never ‘indulged’ in The Dresden Files, Fallout series, The Elder Scrolls, Grim Fandango, My Hero Academia, Dishonored, Worm/Ward, or Girl Genius, though he apparently had plans on doing so for each and every one of them. And when I asked him if he liked Sherlock Homes, he asked, ‘Which version?’ and gave detailed descriptions of his opinions on several.

Now Doctor Who, that really set him off. He raved about the ‘the hypocritical renegade timelord from a race of power mad children’ and how he thinks ‘the daleks should just wipe the whole slate clean’. He also criticized the world of Rick and Morty for ‘not being as expansive as advertised’ and thought Rick himself was ‘a drunk old fool who doesn’t deserve his victories’. When I asked him to explain, he just sent another emoji and moved on.

Actually, he does that whenever I asked him to explain stuff, or to elaborate, or to stop writing like a nineteenth century absinthe addict. It’s really a standby of his.

Right now, we’re talking about MLP: FIM. Never seen it, but I did exist on the internet during its heyday, and therefore picked up a few pertinent details through sheer osmosis, if nothing else.

_GlowingPurple: I’m telling you clear and truthfully, with all my full-formed heart, that the pony known as Applejack is Thoroughly Homosexual._

_RamblingRose: Get outta here. Doesn’t she have a romantic partner?_

_GlowingPurple: Yes, she does. Several of them, actually._

_RamblingRose: A male one._

_GlowingPurple: No, that she lacks._

_RamblingRose: Yeah, she’s got one. That big red guy. You know, what’s his name._

_GlowingPurple: Big Macintosh, and he’s her brother._

_RamblingRose: Well, that’s just how they do it out in the country. You know what they’re like._

_GlowingPurple: 😐_

_RamblingRose: Yeah, yeah._

I take a sip of water and chuckle to myself. A ding and I look back at the screen to see he’s posted a question.

_GlowingPurple: This has all been a quite amusing diversion, and informative to boot, but now I rather want to get into the meat of our shared experience. The reason behind this whole conversational affair._

_RamblingRose: Wasn’t aware there was one._

_GlowingPurple: What you do not know is a long and varied list of topics._

_RamblingRose: Mad-Eye Moody said it better. Like, a lot better._

_GlowingPurple: Quite. Now tell me, my good fellow: What is your favorite fictional work? Series wide, I mean._

I’m about to write something snarky when I pause, lean back, and think. Really think.

Steven Universe? No, I am by no means blind to the many flaws of that show. Gravity Falls? The same. As with Samurai Jack and OG Teen Titans.

Dresden’s got problems with female characters. DCU and Marvel comics are both too varied to be really be one work, and besides, universe wide I have a lot of problems with both. The Sonic comic is nice, both Archie and IDW, but they both have a couple of issues (heh) and the fans are really weird to boot. Also, I’ve just remembered they’re adaptations of games. Games I haven’t ever actually played.

*cough*

Elder Scrolls is riddled with bugs. Fallout games keep crashing on me. Dishonored games have a nice world but are too short. Witcher games have nice gameplay but are too long. Dragon Age is preachy, Mass Effect imploded after game two, Pillars of Eternity and Wasteland are both kinda slogging messes in places, Rwby is a guilty pleasure and Hazbin Hotel only has, like, a handful of things out, so that’s way too early to make any kind of call on.

He’s made his opinion clear on fanfics (it’s negative), so With This Ring, What’s Her Name in Hufflepuff, and Hellsing Abridged probably won’t go over well. And besides, now that I think about it, they probably aren’t the answer anyways.

But what is?

Doctor Who, Dr. McNinja, Team Fortress, Dark Tower…

JoJo, John Wick, One Piece, Wolfenstien…

Pokemon, Mario, Doom, Ace Attorney…

GoT, KND, KoL, Skin Hor-

Wait.

No, I got it. I got it now.

I lean back in, and type my answer

_RamblingRose: Fallen London._

A moment, and then a reply.

_GlowingPurple: What an unconventional answer! May I ask why?_

_RamblingRose: I’ve been with it for a long, long time. Longer than a lot of things in my life. Started way back at the beginning of the twenty tens, after I saw the Extra Credits video, and I’ve stuck with it since._

_GlowingPurple: That’s quite the commitment._

_RamblingRose: Yeah. It’s outlasted friendships. It’s outlasted homes._

_GlowingPurple: Do you like the other parts of the series?_

_RamblingRose: I do._

I really do.

I got started cause of the video. My brother showed it to me, and despite being a browser game, the series just hooked me. The writing, the world, the characters. It sunk in its teeth and refused to let me go.

I played Sunless Sea, helped fund Sunless Skies. Love both of them as well. I got myself an Exceptional Friendship to help support the devs, bought various extra stories for the same reason. The in-game festivals are always treats. For me, that is. My wallet finds them a different story.

And it always baffles me a little, just how much I love the game. It’s a browser game, for god’s sake. You get one action every ten minutes, every action runs a challenge amount against a stat of yours so it can tell you your odds of victory, and the whole damn experience can best be described as grinding your way up to eventual success. I should hate it.

But I don’t. I adore it. It’s a dark and funny little game in the tab of the left corner of my browser, always there, always ready. Hell, for the past few months, it was the only entertainment I had. I’d let the actions run up on my phone, then spend them on my breaks before I hit the makeshift sack. It was a lifeline, a thing that kept me semi-sane during a very hard time.

A ding.

_GlowingPurple: Given how long you’ve spent with the game, are you sure you really like it? That it isn’t nostalgia blinding you, or a variant on the venerable Sunk Cost Fallacy?_

A fair question. I had put a lot into it, over a long period of time.

I think about for a long moment, go to the game itself, stare at the screen, gears turning in my head, before going back to discord and answering the question.

_RamblingRose: Yes. I’m sure I like it. I’m sure that it’s my favorite. It and its spinoff games and it’s whole funny little world. I love it._

_GlowingPurple: Well then, my delicious friend, I suppose I have another question for you._

There’s a pause with him not typing anything. I stare at the screen for a minute before I realize what he wants.

_RamblingRose: Oh?_

_GlowingPurple: If you had the chance, would you want to live in your favorite work’s world?_

I don’t even hesitate.

_RamblingRose: No._

_GlowingPurple: Well then. I shall be generous to you._

_GlowingPurple: Wait, what?_

_RamblingRose: I said no. Also, what do mean by ‘generous’?_

_GlowingPurple: What do you mean by ‘no’?_

_RamblingRose: No means no. As in, the opposite of yes._

_GlowingPurple: But you said it was your favorite work?_

_RamblingRose: It is._

_GlowingPurple: Then why no?_

I shake my head and laugh a little.

_RamblingRose: Cause it would suck to live there?_

_GlowingPurple: But you like the work!_

_RamblingRose: I do! But I don’t want to live in underground Victorian era London, surrounded by jerks and talking cats and jerkish talking cats. The whole mess is a nightmare!_

_GlowingPurple: But you love it!_

_RamblingRose: I do love it. I love the writing! I love the setting! I love the lore and the world and all of it! But I wouldn’t want to live in it. That’d suck!_

_GlowingPurple: But you could come back to life!_

_RamblingRose: Yeah, if some shanked me. Not if I died of old age or sickness or whatever._

_GlowingPurple: I don’t understand. This is very abnormal. Why would you not want to live there?_

_RamblingRose: Uh, leaving aside all the horrifying cosmic shit, and the fact that the city is lacking decent plumbing, good food, and clean air? The ruling nobility are corrupt, everything is under the thumbs of a group of inscrutable space monsters who keep running a billion malevolent schemes against London and each other, there’s an entire faction based around the sheer amount spying going on, Hell is right around the corner swindling people’s very souls out from under them, crime is rampant, spiders are ripping out folks’ eyeballs, dream monsters can exit out of mirrors to posses normal people, the culture is very xenophobic and classist and the only people who want to change it are organized by a group of lunatics who are seeking to kill all light, and there’s no internet or computers. Or tv. Or radios. Or publicly available electricity at all, really._

_GlowingPurple: But you love it!_

_RamblingRose: And you sound like a broken record!_

_GlowingPurple: This is confusing._

_RamblingRose: Look, just because I think something fictional is cool or interesting doesn’t mean I want to see it happen IRL. I mean, the 2012 movie has a great scene where LA is just fucking destroyed, but if that actually happened, I’d wind up weeping my eyes out._

_GlowingPurple: I think you’re lying._

_RamblingRose: I know I’m not._

_GlowingPurple: You really do want to live there, don’t you?_

_RamblingRose: No._

_GlowingPurple: I think you do._

_RamblingRose: I know I don’t._

_GlowingPurple: I think you’re wrong._

_RamblingRose: And I think that I have long since passed the point of not knowing what I actually want in my life._

_GlowingPurple: You’re wrong. You want to live in the world of Fallen London._

Alright, now I’m getting kinda cranky.

_RamblingRose: Look. I’m not a kid. Or a teenager. I’m a fully grown godamn adult in my motherfucking twenties. I live on my own, I’m gainfully employed, I pay my fucking taxes. And at this point in my life, I think I should know what it is that I, myself, want, and what it is I fucking goddamn don’t._

_GlowingPurple: This is all so irregular. This is all so very irregular._

_RamblingRose: You gonna keep harping on how weird this is for you?_

_GlowingPurple: YES_

I blink and shake my head. Really odd duck, this one.

_RamblingRose: Look, if it weirds you out so much, then just ignore it, ok?_

_GlowingPurple: You think I should?_

_RamblingRose: Yeah._

_GlowingPurple: Very well then. I shall do that._

The air suddenly feels weird. Really, really weird. Like the quiet air before a thunder strike, mixed with the heavy humidity of a warm Florida day. The hairs on my arms rise up and I look down at them.

The screen’s glow changes. My head snaps up and the screen’s now deep purple? What?

I lift a finger and lightly poke the screen and it bursts into purple flames.

I draw my hand back sharply.

The…fire… it’s not giving off heat. I… can see the screen…I…

I, what…I don’t…what…

“I shall give you a gift, my friend.”

I spin around to see the silhouette of a man, standing behind me. He slowly advances on me, head bowed, hands clasped behind his back.

“The gift of a life less ordinary.”

I stumble back, trip over my chair, land on my ass. I scoot along the ground until my back is against the wall.

He keeps advancing, slowly but surely. The lights are out now. I only just noticed that. They went out the same time my monitor started to burn.

The man advances until he stops before me. I’m hyperventilating. I can’t see anything about him. Anything but his eyes.

They’re a deep and glowing purple, just like the fire.

Just like…

“A life worth living.”

My mind fumbles for a response, any response, and in its sleep deprived state, fails utterly.

The man’s eyes flash brightly, and my world goes dark.


	2. Chapter 1: An Auspicous Arrival

No one in London would forget the day The American Escapist arrived in town.  
  
Granted, it was not because that was the day the fifth city received its most sensationalized disappearance act. The American Escapist’s vanishing trick would inspire countless newspaper articles, penny dreadfuls, and police manhunts, but the fact that he arrived in town on that particular day was widely unknown by most and dismissed as mere coincidence by all the rest.  
  
(Save, of course, for those special kinds of conspiracists who’s mad ramblings are always completely unbelievable, unspeakably fantastical, and inevitably, unflinchingly correct.)  
  
No, it was not the arrival of one strange, fat, blonde American who would, in the very near future, disappear from the cells of New Newgate with nary a trace that burned that particular day into the minds of all the sentient entities within the confines of the city of London.  
  
It was the massive fuck-off purple explosion high above the city that did that.  
  
\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
The building rocked from basement to attic. The foundations shook. The rafters rattled. Dust came down from the ceilings on every floor, and the rats between said floors shat themselves nearly to a one.  
  
Books flew from shelves, glass cracked, knick-nacks tumbled to the ground, and one man very irritably jolted awake.  
  
“Oh god, what now?!” he cried out in annoyance.  
  
The Dark-Spectacled Admiral dragged himself out of his luxurious bed. He’d learned that The Dawn Machine had been making some very big moves lately and had promptly resorted to the finest wines from Greyfields to cope. At the time, this had all seemed very sensible, but now, several hours on and in the midst of a rather nasty hangover, he wondered if his past self had, in fact, been wrong.  
  
He shook himself and tried to power through the blinding pain. His gaze swept across the room.  
  
All his stuff was on the floor. Why was that?  
  
And what had been that noise that had so rudely awakened him from the lovely dream about a resurgent Britannia?  
  
And why was the window flooded with blazing purple light?  
  
…  
  
It took a moment for his still somewhat drunken mind to put the pieces together, but the man was still a genius after all these years, and he quickly deduced that perhaps the unnatural blaze outside his window was responsible for some of the other irregularities in his recent life.  
  
He stumbled to the window, squinting, and looked up at the roof of the cavern.  
  
There, at a point his memories of a long distant surface informed him was analogous to high noon, was a purple fire, burning in the sky like an unnatural and off-color sun.  
  
The military man stared at the new star for a moment, with a flurry of odd and conflicting emotions swirling through his soul. Surprise, confusion, wonder, nostalgia.  
  
Sadness.  
  
Longing.  
  
Dread.  
  
But ultimately, his mind settled on that same emotion all British governmental employees feel when they encounter something unfamiliar and unlikely to be thoroughly ignored by the general public.  
  
Weary, annoyance tinted fatigue. Mixed with a healthy dosage of ‘oh god, the paperwork this’ll cause me’.  
  
The admiral looked away from the window and started casting about the room. He knew he had a bottle of the good stuff around here somewhere…  
  
\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
While the details differed (especially for members of the temperance movement), the same sort of story played out all across the city of London.  
  
A loud boom shook the person’s chosen building, quite rudely interrupting whatever they had so decided to be doing that Sunday afternoon, and after picking themselves up and going through the customary _‘what the holy fuck was that!_ ’ which must accompany all unfamiliar explosions, they noticed the strange light coming from the window or the door cracks or the hole Big Jim left in the wall when ‘Lucky’ Littleston decided that laying down five aces in front of a man of notorious and violent temper was a good idea and not at all likely to result in him meeting the boatman headfirst, and peered/looked/rushed/wandered vaguely outside to see what all the fuss was about.  
  
The new star was interesting, and strange, and it was probably going to kill them because of course it was, but London was a city of marvels and oddities, and most people were less inspired by, or terrified of, the strange ball of burning color in the air than they were annoyed and exasperated by the inconveniences that they were now facing because of it.  
  
The Jovial Contrarian, for example, had been thrown from his wheelchair and had been sent sprawling helplessly onto the ground. This in and of itself had caused more distress than annoyance in those around him, but when he started to cheerfully argue that light above them wasn’t real and everyone was simply seeing things, several members of the crowd started to fantasize recreating the event, perhaps with the addition of some stairs for him to tumble down and hopefully break his neck upon.  
  
Meanwhile, Feducci had been practicing throwing his lance across the room and into a dueling dummy, but the explosion had thrown off his aim, and now his favorite butler was currently pinned to a wall by several feet of cold, hard steel. The light had faded from his eyes, but it would be back shortly, and the man had made clear before he went that he _would_ be receiving hazard pay this time. As his servants tried to wriggle the weapon out of the corpse without causing too much damage to it, Feducci glared daggers at the sky’s recent addition, knowing that, while he could ignore this demand from his employee, doing so would result in him not being an employee for much longer. And that meant losing the one man who knew exactly how he liked his tea.  
  
In the depths of the Bazaar, Mr. Spices stared around itself at all the bottles of _very valuable and important fluids_ that were now so much puddles on the floor, and wondered, not for the first time, if simply fleeing the bazaar for the far east was worth the inevitable hardships and consequences. A loud sound caused its ears to prick up, and it realized that the explosion that had turned its lab to so many shards had also severely disorganized Mr. Pages’ book collection.  
  
At this realization, the wondering increased.  
  
Several urchins, couriers, and criminals had been hopping the rooftops of the city when the booming had occurred, and now there were more than a few corpses on the streets, getting worked over by posthumous pickpockets looking to make a quick buck in the short time between death and resurrection. Some corpses had fallen into the stolen river and been subsequently claimed by the drownies. A few brave souls had dived in after the potential paydays and had also been subsequently claimed by the drownies.  
  
A few of the drier (and also more sensible) pickpockets were chased off by constables so the dead could resurrect in peace. These few were vastly outnumbered by those chased off so the constables could do the pickpocketing themselves, but not quite outnumbered by those who were joined peacefully by the boys in blue for the sake of a split of the take.  
  
Performances around the city halted, first because a loud noise and sudden light change will disrupt all but the most committed performer, and then because damn near every artist in London decided they needed to immortalized the event in painting, poem or song, regardless of previous circumstances. This was very vexing to, say, those who had shelled out a not inconsiderable sum for front row tickets to the royal opera, but artists of all stripes are fickle creatures, and cannot be relied upon to mind such trivialities as obligations or responsibilities. If they could, the world would be perhaps a much more sensible, if boring, place.  
  
The devils looked up and shook their heads in bone deep weariness. The rubbery men looked up and shook their heads in dread filled resignation. The cats looked up and shook their heads because they saw the devils and rubbery men do it, and they wanted to seem like they knew what the fuck was going on. And the clay men looked up and did not shake their heads, because they were fine with admitting that they did not.  
  
Shopkeepers quarreled, nobles swooned, journalists dashed about trying to see everything, photographers stood frozen trying to decided what to photograph, basically every member of the church decided this was definitely Hell’s work, oh yes, _definitely_ Hell’s work, and professional criminals took advantage of the confusion and chaos to, as the youth put it, ‘make bank’.  
  
All this meant that, when a mysterious and shadowy man appeared from nowhere in a tucked away back alley with a fatter and less mysterious man in tow, not a single soul in London noticed…  
  
\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
“Welcome to Fallen London!”  
  
What…I…What…  
  
The air. Oh god, the air. It’s… _Foul_.  
  
It’s like sticking my head in a chimney, but _worse_.  
  
Everything is… _filled_ …with _smoke_ and _soot_. Some of it’s white. Some of it’s black. Some of it’s red, or yellow, or _green_.  
  
The ground…I think there’s urine everywhere. Urine and shit, just… _Everywhere_.  
  
And garbage. So much garbage.  
  
The air…The _smell_ …  
  
I can’t…I can’t breathe. I literally can’t breathe.  
  
I look around me, stumbling. The buildings are dirty. We’re in an alley. The street it connects to is cobblestone and the sky…  
  
A burning purple sun shines merrily in the otherwise pitch-black sky.  
  
That sun. It’s the same color as…  
  
I spin, well, stumblingly turn, around and look at the man who brought me here. For the first time, I can get a good look at him.  
  
It’s…It’s like he’s made of shadows. His skin, his clothes. He’s well dressed, in a three-piece suit and top hat with rings on every finger, but it’s all like someone made a man-shaped mold and filled it with pure darkness.  
  
The only things that aren’t darkness are the jewels on his rings and his monochrome eyes. Both burn with purple light, same as the star above me.  
  
I don’t…I don’t… I can’t…  
  
“WHAT IS GOING ON!”  
  
He winces. “There’s no need to shout”.  
  
“I’M… I DON’T KNOW WHERE, BUT I’M NOT IN MY APARTMENT ANYMORE AND THAT SEEMS LIKE A VERY GOOD REASON TO SHOUT!”  
  
He sighs, likes he’s dealing with a really stupid student. “I told you, my good fellow. We are in Fallen London.”  
  
Fallen…Fallen London.  
  
Fallen London.  
  
Fallen. London.  
  
“The…The game?” I ask, weakly.  
  
“Not strictly so, no,” He cheerfully replies. “There are many worlds in the multiverse. That most of them resemble works of fiction from your world is a coincidence that many scholars ponder heavily!”  
  
He looks at me for a moment and sees that he isn’t really getting through.  
  
“Yes, the game. We are in the world the game is based off of. If that helps.” He states, slightly deflated.  
  
I look up. “What…What’s that?”  
  
He looks up also. “Hmm? Oh, that. I just like to announce my arrivals like that. It lets those in the know…well, know, that I have arrived!” He beams cheerfully.  
  
“And, who … are you?” I ask, my breath still short and mind still spinning.  
  
“I won’t say to you, and don’t really care what you call me! This isn’t about me! This is about you, and the opportunity that you have been given!” He proclaims grandly.  
  
“Opportunity?” I ask faintly.  
  
“Oh, yes! You are now in the world of your favorite fiction! The world of Fallen London, with all its wonders and complexities! All the adventure, all the grandeur, all the glory and beauty and rewards it entails!” His arms sweep around him, as though he isn’t gesturing to a dingy, smoke filled back alley filled with human waste and filth.  
  
“Ad..Adventures?”  
  
“Oh, yes! Adventures of all shapes and kinds! You can become a thief, a poet, a detective, a monster hunter or all of the above! You can’t live mundanely, not here! This city won’t let you!” He walks past me and points to a series of domes in the distance. “SHE won’t let you!”  
  
This…This guy just…He just showed up in my apartment. He just showed up.  
  
“Yes, this is a marvelous and beauteous place, indeed!”  
  
He showed up and took me here.  
  
“And I have given it to you, my friend, as a gift!”  
  
He took me here. Into a video game.  
  
“A wonderful gift!”  
  
Even after I made it clear I didn’t want to live here.  
  
“A gift of a life less ordinary!”  
  
That I thought that it would suck.  
  
“A life worth living!”  
  
That I would hate it.  
  
“No need to thank me.”  
  
 _And he thinks that he’s done a good thing._  
  
“I know that you want to, but, please, it would embarrass me.”  
  
 _His back is turned, he’s still gesturing, still talking. **About how this is a good thing.**_  
  
“Yes sir, I look forward to seeing how you make your way here! How you will thrive here!”  
  
 ** _This fucker…This motherfucker…_**  
  
“Honestly, I don’t know where you’ll start!”  
  
 ** _This fucker…_**  
  
“But I do look forward to seeing what _awesome_ act you’ll do first!”  
  
He turns around beaming.  
  
Just in time to see my fist hurtling straight into his face.


	3. There's a fight going down on Wheeling Street!

Inspector Oliver Atkinson was a relatively old man.  
  
By the standards of a modern society in a first world country, he was perhaps not too ancient. A stern fifty-three years of age would still be thirty shy of the average life expectancy for a gentleman such as himself.  
  
But Inspector Oliver Atkinson did not live in a modern society in a first world country. He lived in London in the eighteen nineties, and so his age made him a veritable elder, brimming with experience and wisdom.  
  
And such experiences he had lived through! Such wisdom he had earned through life’s harsh lessons! He remembered the day that London fell, when the darkness rose and took the sky. He was there in those early days of the fifth city, when death was discovered to be impermanent and all manner of things seemed possible. He marched the fields of hell and made it back without needing to be ransomed, and had joined his brother on a voyage across the zee, going to far-off places so bizarre and incredible no one would ever dare to believe him should he have spoken of them at home (which, it should be said, rather limited their usefulness as a method for getting free drinks).  
  
Yes, Inspector Oliver Atkinson was a man who had lived and seen. _Lived_ and _seen_.  
  
So, when his subordinates had come racing round the corner, desperate, confused, and speaking of madness, he had simply raised an eyebrow and taken a sip of tea. Nothing short of a world-shaking event deserved such panting, in his humble opinion, and the blazing ball in the sky only barely qualified.  
  
But they were young, and he had been young once, and unless his memories failed him (which, given his age, was an admitted possibility), he had rushed to his elders with something important on more than one occasion, only to be brushed off due to nothing but his age. Then the problem spiraled, all his efforts to fix it on his own failed, and the next thing you knew, all the dogs in town were dead and the duck pond was on fire.  
  
So, he moved himself from his (comfortable) chair with an old man’s sigh and followed them to see what, exactly, was what.  
  
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
“I’LL KILL YOU, YOU BASTARD!”  
  
“GO AHEAD AND TRY IT, BALDY! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!”  
“ **KILL! YOU!** ”  
  
 _Alright, so maybe this is a sight. Nothing worth **panicking** over, but still._  
  
His subordinates looked at him with panicked expressions while Inspector Oliver Atkinson quietly took in the spectacle before him.  
  
In a dingy backroad, lit up by blazing purple light and surrounded by a half interested, half nervous crowd, two figures were having a knockdown bare-knuckle brawl while screaming at the top of their lungs.  
  
Nothing extraordinary so far (especially given how the cricket season was going) but the appearance of the two men whaling on each other made the event stand out, just a bit.  
  
The angrier (and heftier) of the two was blond man with pinz-nez -esc glasses. His clothes were odd, his shoes were missing, and his accent was, unless Inspector Oliver Atkinson was mistaken, American. One tended not to see to many of them in the neath these days, given the manner in which ex-president Grant had rather famously died.  
  
The strangely dressed man would have made the spectacle worth a look or two, but the other figure (who was currently hitting the American with a top hat and laughing like a child) was the sort that made most men’s hearts skip a beat.  
  
He was shadows. Nothing but shadows and purple, blazing lights. A hole in the world in the shape of a man, with holes in him in turn, through which unnatural fires flickered and sparked and shone. Void and darkness, moving and speaking and _oh look the fat chaps’ got him in a headlock. Not bad._  
  
Inspector Oliver Atkinson quietly puffed away on his pipe, admiring the fat man’s wrestling skills.  
  
“Uh, sir?”  
  
Inspector Oliver Atkinson turned from the fight to look at one of his subordinates.  
  
“Yes?” he said quietly.  
  
“Don’t you think we should…do? Something?”  
  
Inspector Oliver Atkinson looked at him and raised an eyebrow.  
  
“Like what?” he said.  
  
“…Arrest them?” the subordinate answered timidly.  
  
Inspector Oliver Atkinson gave his subordinate a complex and multi-layered look, one he had refined through years of dealing with the dullards the Yard kept sending him. It was a look that quite clearly said _If you knew what you were supposed to be doing, and you came to get me anyways, then what is the point of having you on the force? Should I, perhaps, take over your duties in addition to my own, hmm? Do all the policing myself, all the arresting and the paperwork and dealing with the victims while you make yourself comfortable by the fire, drinking tea and reading pulp novellas? Perhaps, if you knew what you were supposed to do, then you should have done it **instead of bothering me**._  
  
It was quite the impressive look. Inspector Oliver Atkinson was very proud of it.  
  
His subordinate wilted under the harsh gaze and raised eyebrow, before turning to the two men and clearing his throat.  
  
“Stop!”  
  
The two men paused.  
  
“You are both under arrest! Come quietly and no-one needs to be hurt!”  
  
The American looked over the (much shorter) constable and gave him an unimpressed glance.  
  
The walking void…  
  
 _Smiled_.  
  
Inspector Oliver Atkinson moved to pull out his revolver whilst the crowd flinched back. It was futile motion, in all likelihood, but he’d be damned if he didn’t go down fighting.  
  
But the shadow man didn’t attack. He simply started to _fade_.  
  
First the arms, then the legs. His torso went see through, then the neck and the head. The American stumbled as the bits of the man he had been holding down vanished into non-existence.  
  
The eyes guttered out like candles in the wind, and the last thing to go was, of course, the smile, which hung in the air for second or two after everything else had disappeared.  
  
And then he was gone, as though he had never been there at all.  
  
The American stared at the space his opponent had been before looking up at the constables. The constables looked back, and the street was silent.  
  
The American opened his mouth.  
  
“Yes, You’re still under arrest.”  
  
The mouth snapped shut, only to open again to unleash a litany of curses on the poor crowd’s ears.  
  
  
  
  
  
AN: Yeah, it's a bit short. Sorry. See you guys soon!


End file.
